Structure and expression of a murine homologue of sky receptor tyrosine kinase gene.

To identify new receptor tyrosine kinases (RTKs), we screened cDNAs from mouse mammary tumor cells and mouse brain. A homology search of the complete cDNA sequences obtained showed that one cDNA was a murine homologue of recently reported human sky [Ohashi, K. et al. (1994) Oncogene 9, 699-705]. Another cDNA obtained was also related to sky but had a 5' upstream sequence similar to brt [Fujimoto, J. and Yamamoto, T. (1994) Oncogene 9, 693-698]. Analysis of the 5' region of the sky genomic DNA revealed that brt-type and sky-type sequences are encoded by the sky gene in different exons. The upstream region of the sky-type coding exon is highly GC-rich and contains potential recognition sites for the Sp1 trans-acting factor, but lacks TATA and CAAT boxes, features commonly found in promoters of other RTKs. To examine whether this upstream region functions as a promoter, we fused it with chloramphenicol acetyltransferase (CAT) gene and transfected the construct into COS-7 cells. The results of the CAT assay showed that the sky upstream region retains a significant promoter activity. Furthermore, primer extension analysis revealed that the transcription starts at -240 nt upstream from the sky translation initiation codon. These observations suggest that the brt- and sky-types of mRNA are transcribed from a single sky gene by an alternative promoter usage.